


Escape Route

by lonelywalker



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: AU, Age Difference, F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-S2, Frank Lundy arrives in Oregon. Fortunately, Deb won't let him get away that easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape Route

Lundy travels light – a couple of suitcases carrying mostly suits, a briefcase for the documents pertaining to his latest case, a laptop, and a bag slung over his shoulder that mostly seems to be a repository for cheap paperback novels.

Usually he's guessed the killer by the time they taxi onto the runway.

Most of his professional life has been spent this way, constantly in transit between cities, between airports. The last couple of years even more so, since Connie died. He's had no reason to go home, and no real home to go to with his daughter living with some boyfriend or other, the old family house gathering dust. In some ways he prefers this: the routine of it, the limitation of his life to things he knows he can do, the easy escape route at the end of every assignment.

Debra had changed everything.

At his age, he's not supposed to be in love with anyone but his wife, even though he'd pocketed his wedding ring a year ago and reluctantly stuck out a few awkward dates arranged by friends. He's certainly not supposed to fall for hot young cops half his age. The sex, he has to admit, is nice. But he should be able to sever all ties, catch the next plane and never look back.

She hasn't made it easy for him in any way but one. She's beautiful and smart and dedicated and she makes him laugh. She'd been ready to go ice fishing with him - _ice fishing_ for god's sake - and just as ready to drop her entire life to come to Oregon. He'd booked her a ticket and sat in the airport staring at a Jonathan Kellerman novel, heart thudding in his chest at the very idea that she might actually show up.

There hadn't even been a phone call.

In a way – many ways – he's relieved. It makes things simpler, as a kid in a suit from the Bureau's Portland office picks him up at the airport and takes him to another identikit apartment in the heart of the city. She would be bored here while he's on this case, and even more so during whatever followed. He's almost sixty, almost retired. What can he offer her? He'd have ripped her away from her brother and her friends and the job she loves for nothing.

By the time he unpacks, suits hung up in the closet, underwear stashed in a drawer, he's just about convinced himself not to miss her.

Suits. He barely wears anything else these days. There's a pair of Levis at the bottom of his suitcase, where they've been since before Miami. Given all the good meals he's cooked recently, he doubts they still fit.

Lundy makes himself some tea, hauls out the case files, and reads. There will be a meeting in the morning. He has to be on the ball, make a few jokes, become everyone's friend. Perhaps they have smartass young police officers in Portland too. He honestly hopes not.

It's 4am when his cellphone rings. He squints at the screen in the darkness, assuming it's probably the field office, reporting another body.

"Lundy."

" _Fuck_." It's Debra. "What's your fucking apartment number?"

"I…" He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. "In Miami?"

"In Portland. God. Wake up! I just sat through the world's worst goddamn red eye with screaming kids and terrible fucking turbulence, and now the security guy down here won't let me in."

She's here. _Here_. Lundy sits up, wishing badly that he kept a supply of Red Bull by his bed. "How did you...?"

"I asked a fucking cab driver. Now what's your apartment number?"

"I… Have no idea. Wait there. I'll be right down."

He only wakes up when he's halfway down the stairs, having grabbed the first clothes that came to hand. Debra's _here_. Not only here, but tired and pissed off in the lobby of his apartment building, probably seconds away from having a SWAT team called on her ass.

"Hi," he says when he finally sees her.

The security guard looks like he's about to faint out of sheer relief as Deb stops mid-rant to chuck her bag at Lundy's feet and tackle him into a hug. Half asleep or not, any reservations he'd had, any reasons he'd convinced himself meant they couldn't be together – they all ebb away with the feel of her in his arms. "Debra..."

"How could you come to fucking _Portland_ without me?" she demands. She's smiling, but there's a barest hint of tears in her voice. She must really be tired.

"You weren't at the airport, I thought you'd…"

"I was saving Dex from a fucking _inferno_."

"You didn't call…"

"Yeah, see above. _Saving Dex from a fucking inferno_. What's your excuse?"

She has a point. Lundy shuts his mouth.

"So," she says, untangling herself enough to hand him her bag (not big enough for more than a change of clothes and a toothbrush). "I think it's about time you showed me your- Mother _fucker_. Are you wearing _jeans_?"

Upstairs, she swears she'll be out like a light the moment her head hits the pillow. It doesn't quite work like that.

By the time he's quietly unpacked for her – clothes in drawers, toothbrush in the bathroom – she's still watching him in the half-light, snuggled up in his duvet exactly where he had been half an hour ago. They could talk. Hash out some things, some practical details… But their relationship has worked so far mainly through completely ignoring practical details.

Lundy unbuttons his fly and drops his jeans to the floor, pulling the undershirt over his head and slipping in beside her. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours since they were last together like this, but that was halfway across the country, and before... Before he realized what missing her would be like.

His hand drifts over her naked skin, all warm angles, and she hooks an arm around him, dragging him closer. "You've got me for two weeks," she says, quiet and clear as though this is a briefing and lives are at stake. Perhaps they are. "After that, we _will_ figure out dates and vacations and red eye flights, because we're both kidding ourselves if we think anything's better than this. And so you already had a great love in your life. Sweet. I'm happy for you. But my great love turned out to be a serial killer, so now _I_ need to be happy."

If he has any flaws, his wife had told him once, it's that he spends far too much time thinking. And all those thoughts – of jobs and families and age differences and Connie herself – threaten to collide as he looks at Deb, his hand gently cupping her cheek. But what he says is: "Did you rehearse that on the plane?"

"Nine fucking _hours_ , Frank." But then she's smiling and he is too, leaning in to kiss her. It seems to be the best answer to everything when it comes to Debra.

"Mm, god…" She takes his hand and guides it to her breast, her fingers snaking down to his groin. "Tell me you packed condoms."

In two or three hours, there'll be a Fed at his door, ready to take him, bleary-eyed or not, to take on yet another major case. He's Frank Lundy, rockstar of the profiling world, fresh from taking on the Bay Harbor Butcher and winning. And this is his life now: airports and case files and...

A hot young cop, half his age, her limbs tangled up with his, teeth nipping at his bottom lip as he laughs and pushes it all away: all the thoughts, all the worries, all those damn practical details.

She's the only escape route he needs.


End file.
